“Understood,” Kacey said as she walked over to the Hind. She stopped and blinked, though, at the sight of the gunners. “What did you do, dig up the morgue?”
Father Ferani had, indeed, spent most of his time in the Great War safely behind the lines, much to his chagrin. But only “most.” He had also been a member of the groups that ran weapons and supplies into Stalingrad during the siege. Those had been floated down on barges, often under direct and indirect fire from the Germans. It was not distinguished service but he’d had quite a few shots fired at him in anger. His biggest disappointment was that he rarely got to fire back.
When the call had gone out for people to man the guns on the attack bird, everyone had again volunteered. But this time, the Fathers interjected. Their argument went something like this. All of the young people were committed to the battle. Those of the middle age must stay to keep the farm going and, in extremis, defend it if all the others fell. And the job was not strenuous; all that the person need do was hold onto the gun and fire. Even the old women could do that. The Elders were more than capable, thank you.
Everyone knew it was a lie. With the exception of Father Kulcyanov, none of the current crop of elders had ever had the opportunity to earn their Death Guard. Grapa Makanee, who had died two years before, was, except for Father Kulcyanov, the last survivor of the line combatants of the Great War. The Fathers wanted one chance, damnit, to earn their Death Guard.
So the rest of the Keldara humored them. Not only because, excepting only the Kildar, they were the final word in discipline amongst a disciplined people but because the way things were going, everyone was going to get the chance to earn a Death Guard. Had not Mother Lenka gathered all the young women to go to the battle? What was next, the Mothers?
Father Kulcyanov had excused himself. While he would have enjoyed one last whiff of cordite, he had a Death Guard, a big one that had been waiting many decades to be his servants in the Halls. And he knew that, with his heart, it was possible he would not survive even if he was not shot.
Then there was the matter of which Fathers got to go. None except Father Kulcyanov had been willing to relinquish the honor. Father Makanee had suggested arm wrestling. Father Ferani had countered with a hand-weapons free-for-all, the traditional way of settling things that no one could agree upon in the Keldara.
Father Kulcyanov had forced them to draw straws. Father Ferani had been pissed. He’d been slowly developing the desire over decades to bury an axe in Father Devlich.
Father Ferani smiled at the young woman and gestured for her to get in the aircraft.
“Are fighters,” he said in painfully bad English. “You pilot. Fly. Fight. Kill. We guard sides.”
“Gunny,” Kacey whispered, “I think that zombie just said something.”
“Kacey, everybody else is committed,” D’Allaird whispered back. “I found out when I was working on the bird that all the young women have gone up to the pass. All there is left is oldsters and kids. And this guy’s apparently got some combat experience.”
Another oldster, this one somewhat younger, leaned out the door next to the first and looked at her fiercely.
“Are going?” the man barked. “Battle waits!”
The first oldster looked at him contemptuously and spat something in a firm and angry tone. In a second the two were bitching away at each other in what Kacey figured was Georgian. They sounded like a couple of quarreling old women.
“The really old one is Father Ferani,” D’Allaird said as Kacey climbed into the cockpit. “He was in the Russian Army in WWII. The other guy is Father Devlich. They’re the bosses of two of the Six Families. So they’re sort of muckety mucks.”
“Great,” Kacey said. “Not only do I have a couple of corpses riding shotgun, they’re boss corpses. Thanks, Tim.”
“I was sort of busy fixing the bird, ma’am,” D’Allaird replied.
“And you did one hell of a job, Chief,” Kacey said. She sat up in her seat and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks.”
D’Allaird looked shocked, raising one hand to his cheek.
“Captain Bathlick!” he said after a moment.
“What?” she asked as she hit the engine start button. “You see an Equal Opportunity Office around here? Hell, if there was they’d probably be happy as hell. We’ve got equality of race, sex and age down pat. Black engineer, female pilot and two zombies manning the minis. Let’s roll this puppy out, chief. Like the man said, battle is awaitin.”
As before people swarmed forward at D’Allaird’s raised hand and pushed the Hind into the open. It wasn’t nearly as spiffy as the last time; the bird was covered in holes that were patched with hundred-mile-an-hour tape, and all the hydraulic fluid hadn’t been cleaned off. But, as D’Allaird had promised, while there were some yellow lights, none of it was critical. She wasn’t going to need the FLIR for this mission.
But she wasn’t going right away. Another oldster, the guy wearing the tiger skin, walked up to the front of the bird as it was rolled onto the pad. He had that axe and mistletoe in his hands and he waved both over the nose of the bird, chanting something Kacey couldn’t hear.
She wasn’t particularly into mystic mumbo-jumbo but it seeemed important to the Keldara so she waited. But then he stepped back and straightened into a position of attention and raised the axe in front of his nose just like a rifle salute.
Kacey looked at him for a second and then remembered who the guy was. This was the guy who’d picked up a “hero’s medal” for taking out four Tigers with a fucking rocket launcher. And been in Stalingrad, which deserved a medal all in itself. She was being saluted by the equivalent of a Medal of Honor winner.
Kacey slowly raised her hand and gave him the one crispiest salute she’d ever rendered, warrior to warrior, the way it was supposed to fucking be. She wasn’t saluting some guy who’d been promoted for honorable service as an ass-kisser in the Pentagon and she wasn’t being saluted for being a flying truck driver. She was being saluted as a warrior by one fucking warrior par excellence: a pro.
She dropped the salute, fast, and hit the key to engage the props.
Time to go to fucking war.
The Pred pilot knew he should have turned over control before now. His supervisor had asked, twice, if he wanted to turn over the bird. But he’d been flying this mission through the whole last phase and he wasn’t about to walk away now. He had a mission. Find those fucking mortars.
He’d been given a vague area to look and he was looking. But the area was chock-a-block with rock formations and mortars, honestly, were pretty hard to spot during the day when they were firing. At night it was different, they put up one hell of a visual signature. But they didn’t give off a lot of smoke when they fired. The biggest daytime signature was the dust from the baseplates when they slammed into the ground.
Finally, he caught a flash out of the side of the camera view and slewed the camera towards the flash. At first he wasn’t sure he’d found them but then they fired again, throwing up those puffs of dust and, this time, he caught the slight smoke signature.
“Mortars spotted,” he said. “I’ve got clearance to engage?”
“Roger,” his supervisor said, walking over. “Two more birds inbound in about ten minutes. I’ve got Tommy and Hank ready to rock on them. You about ready to take a break and let this one cruise back?” The supervisor bent down and peered at the screen, pushing his glasses up his nose.